Film review: Spitfire

★★★★☆Unashamed patriotism, stirring strings, magisterial narration by Charles Dance — there’s much that’s conventional about this documentary marking 80 years since our most eulogised fighter plane entered service. Yet David Fairhead and Ant Palmer’s film never feels like pre-Brexit tub-thumping, and that’s mainly due to the diversity and vitality of their interviewees.

It’s not just the former RAF aces, who range from garrulous (“Phew, got away with that!” says one, recalling a close-run dogfight) to disarmingly honest about the thrill of shooting down Germans (“I can’t help it, but I did enjoy it”). There are also some of the women who were charged with flying new planes from the factories to the airfields at the height of the war, including one extraordinary woman, 100